[chris]

I posted this in two other threads I seen for homemade dog foods to which no one could really give a great response.

I am a huge outdoors men and I hunt every year for squirrel, turkey, rabbit, venison and possibly going to start duck eventually. Now my question is I know the dogs can have most wild game meats though I never heard much spoken about Squirrel. So can dogs have wild squirrel?

[zcRiley]

Yes, dogs can “have” wild squirrel. However, I think the pet food companies aren’t taking that exotic road just yet. It’s similiar to rabbit, which is already hard to find.

Dogs wouldn’t go out and specifically hunt squirrel; but if they decided to take a few bites of one, it won’t kill them. If your dog has a healthy immune system, they’ll survive through the rare intestinal parasite they may acquire. If you hunt it, deep freeze the squirrel meat (like you do any wild game meat) for at least 30 days to kill any parasites/larvae. You didn’t mention if you prepare it raw, dehydrated or cooked to your pet. You can make Kentucky Burgoo for them, stews make great toppers.

The proteins my pups got allergy tested for were as follows (no squirrel though!):
beef
buffalo
elk
goat
kangaroo
lamb
llama
pork/ham
rabbit
venison
yak

[chris]

zcRiley- thanks for the reply!

I don’t really feed my dog anything raw, on a very rare occasion i’ll give him raw pieces of chicken breast or beef cubes, but that is like maybe twice out of the year. I cook everything I give him, mostly into stews or soup like foods. I use everything as a topping for his dry kibble. For example I just had done Venison cooked and pureed with spinach, apples, sweet potato. I usually make a huge mixing bowl of it all and then put it into containers and freeze it and grab one container at a time out when needed. He gets about 2 cups a day over his dry kibble.

I have several recipes made up I’ll be making. I was just wondering about squirrel since i’m tempted on going out squirrel hunting a lot this year. I was concerned mostly because I have been told they’re super high in grease and oil contents. I appreciate the reply though, thanks a ton!

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